


outnumbered and outmatched

by moonburntmemory



Series: ZKFlashFebruary2021 [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Girl dad zuko, One Shot, Steambabies - Freeform, katara knows exactly what she's doing, like a whole lotta them, this is your daily reminder to take your birth control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29487687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonburntmemory/pseuds/moonburntmemory
Summary: Zuko's hopelessly outnumbered by his girls. He doesn't mind in the slightest.(girl dad zuko)
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), background Sokka/Suki
Series: ZKFlashFebruary2021 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165919
Comments: 21
Kudos: 140
Collections: Zutara February Flash Fics





	outnumbered and outmatched

**Author's Note:**

  * For [princess_zel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/princess_zel/gifts), [honeymilkchai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeymilkchai/gifts).



> day 6: boy(s) and girls

1.

In the very beginning, Zuko really had no preference whatsoever. He was simply overjoyed to have a healthy child in his arms with Katara beaming at him. 

Cradling Kya in his arms for the first time was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Any old superstitions regarding the value of a firstborn son had been banished with the first sight of his daughter. 

They named her within a few minutes of being born and simply basked in the radiance of their good fortune. A healthy wife and child were more than he ever could have imagined. The yawning baby with closed eyes resting within a bundle of blue blankets was the culmination of every hope and dream he’d ever had. 

She was a chance to have a family again: one that wouldn’t fall apart. And Zuko knew, even with the shaking nervousness of fatherhood permeating the depths of his mind, that he would not squander such a precious gift.

“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Katara whispered with a soft timidity, careful not to wake the content little creature he had returned into her arms.

“Yeah, she is. Because she takes after her mother,” Zuko remarked, tracing the sloping bridge of the child’s nose with the tip of his finger. 

He didn’t know whose face the child would wear or what color the slate grey of her eyes would become. Zuko didn’t care. 

Whether she would throw daggers of ice or fire or steel didn’t matter in the slightest. Perhaps she would rule a nation, but that would be up to her. The destinies of her parents would not overlap her own.

Kya would never live under the shadow of expectations she couldn’t live up to. 

Zuko loved her and her mother; he would do anything to protect his girls. This kind of love was unconditional and Kya would know that all of her life. He would make sure of this. 

2.

Reika arrived in the middle of spring less than two years later, right when the first flowers of the year were beginning to bloom. 

Zuko still gave no thought to the child beyond her health and happiness. It was hard to believe he had two daughters, but Katara nuzzling into his neck while Kya bounced on his lap made it seem more real.

The newborn object of the banquet’s affections stared with wide eyes from her mother’s arms. Reika almost slipped onto Katara’s knees more than once because of the ceremonial silk wrapped around her, but her mother would simply smile and hike her back up every time. All of the troubles and tears that accompanied parenthood were forgotten in the light of the occasion. 

His second daughter’s complexion was strikingly similar to her mother’s in the warm glow cast over her. Zuko smiled at the notion of a miniature version of his wife running around. He had no doubt this would cause him unimaginable grief in the teenage years but tried not to dwell on this. 

Kya grew tired in Zuko’s embrace, eventually drifting off into a drool-producing slumber. She always loved to sleep through anything and everything important, so this came as no surprise. Her eyes, now a shade of umber brown he suspected they would stay, were hidden behind a lax expression and closed lids. Next to him, Reika remained alert for only a few more moments before succumbing to the hardships of infancy and slumping in Katara’s arms. 

Zuko shared an amused grin with his wife before Sokka trudged over, suppressing a laugh.

“Wow, they’re both out cold. Those two have to have set some kind of record for sleeping by now,” their uncle remarked in a rather loud whisper.

Katara pressed a finger to her lips to shush him before countering, “They’re babies, Sokka. Of course, they sleep all day. What’s your excuse?”

They all dissolved into fits of laughter that culminated with baby Reika being handed off to her Aunt Suki and Sokka clapping Zuko on the back.

“I was kind of iffy about having you as a brother-in-law, but you have proved yourself with these girls. They are absolutely adorable,” he affirmed with a genuine grin as he twirled one of the soft curls of Kya’s head in his fingers.

Zuko returned it, managing a “Thanks, Sokka. That means a lot-“

And then he had to ruin it. “There’s absolutely no trace of their jerk-bender heritage. That’s those Water Tribe genes for ya!”

Zuko merely shook his head as Katara’s nose crinkled with laughter, shaking Reika ever so slightly. The baby girl continued to nap peacefully, blissfully unaware of anything beyond the warmth of her family.

3 and 4.

It was after the twins that Zuko started to ponder the idea of having a son. Only abstractly, but the idea invaded his thoughts ever so often.

It had been a surprise to everyone when not one, but two girls entered their lives. Zuko had nearly fainted when the midwife handed him Kyoko while he was already balancing Minami in his other arm. 

It took a while for the gravity of fatherhood with four daughters to sink in. The exact moment this happened could probably be pinpointed to when the twins were a few weeks old.

He and Katara were sprawled on their bed, utterly exhausted as they both clung to a little girl. Zuko wasn’t quite sure which twin he was holding but was too afraid to ask. He should’ve been able to tell them apart by then, but was still hopeless at it. A spark of jealousy was lit within him every time Katara effortlessly recognized which child was which. 

(He’d considered marking one of them with a dot of ink, but Katara would notice immediately.)

It wasn’t his fault they looked exactly the same! More so every day, Kya and Reika were branching off into their own ventures with appearances to match. Zuko could tell who was who from across the courtyard just by Kya’s paleness or Reika’s steadfast refusal to wear anything other than ceremonial robes every day. 

Minami and Kyoko, however, were practically indistinguishable to everyone except for their mother. 

These thoughts swirled around his head like a tumultuous breeze steadied by the warmth of the child laying on his chest. Katara finished nursing the cooing baby in her arms, declaring, “Good night, my sweet little Kyoto. I love you more than the stars and the ocean and the sky.”

It seemed that Zuko was holding Minami. That was good to know.

As Kyoto snuggled into her mother’s chest, Zuko shared a tired grin with Katara. “They’re getting so round from all the milk. They’re going to be little pork-stuffed baos pretty soon.”

Katara tipped her head back and exhaled softly as if taking in her surroundings and committing them to memory. “Yeah, they are.”

There was a comfortable silence before Zuko spoke again. “Katara?”

“Yes, my love?” she replied, her voice heavy with the sleep that was slowly creeping over the two of them.

“I love our daughters more than anything.”

Kya and Reika were asleep in their room next door, but they didn’t need to hear Zuko say this. They already knew this.

“So do I,” she whispered back, shifting to face him.

Zuko’s mind started to prickle with nervousness. “But I was wondering. What if… Maybe we could…”

“We could what?” Katara’s gaze was full of affection that calmed his nerves more effectively than any herbal tea.

Minami scrunched the fabric of his sleeping clothes as he spoke in a silent declaration of her dominion. But Zuko already knew of this. He had no qualms about belonging entirely to the girls in his life. 

“Well, I was thinking that maybe we could try for a boy?” 

5.

They got another girl, of course. It wasn’t what he’d hoped for, but that didn’t detract from his exuberance in the slightest. There was no disappointment when he saw Yuri for the first time, only the familiar tenderness he’d felt so many times before.

Zuko accepted that he wasn’t meant to have sons the second he saw her. His fifth daughter was another addition to the brood of girls who owned his entire heart and soul. He was reminded of this every time he looked at the child’s face.

Yuri already had the beginnings of his sharp features underneath the baby fat and Zuko felt a swell of pride. The other girls were visions of Katara, not that Zuko was complaining. But there was something strangely satisfying about seeing Kya’s fair skin or the twins’ onyx black hair or baby Yuri’s already prominent cheekbones. The little hints of himself mixed with Katara’s beauty present in their children never failed to make him smile. It was proof of their love that he would never be able to look away from.

He was carrying Minami on his shoulders and Kyoto on his back as they wandered through the streets of Republic City. Reika and Kya flung themselves around in a wild chase, popping through Zuko’s legs in a blur before Katara called out, “Girls, be careful.”

They both ignored their mother, continuing to dance around and dirty up their pant legs as much as possible. Katara shot Zuko a look that could only translate to, ‘Some help here, please?’

But the girls were grinning so widely and he hated to ruin their fun. So he pretended to be far more invested in adjusting the haphazardly piled twins than he was. Katara merely sighed as she switched Yuri into her other arm.

It was only when Reika got into the fountain and started trying to freeze her sister in place that Zuko had to step in. “Reika, how many times do we have to tell you? No freezing your sister into ponds!”

Reika’s waterbending was growing stronger every day, something she always wanted to leverage against her big sister. It would be a while before Kya could hold her own with swords or chi-blocking, so Zuko was forced to mediate. He put up a tough front but was secretly delighted to watch the little waterbender learn. It reminded him of Katara when they were younger.

“But Daaaaad. Kya wants to be an ice statue!” the young girl replied with a petulance he didn’t want to take responsibility for (but knew he had fostered).

“I did not! Reika’s a big fat liar who only tells lies!” Kya responded, sticking her tongue out at her sister. 

The twins started to giggle, with Minami calling out, “Fight!” from Zuko’s shoulders.

“No fighting, girls,” Katara said in a steadfast voice.

“But Ma! Reika stole my hairbrush! Then she used it to pet Uncle Aang’s cat!” Kya protested.

“And she apologized for it. So let’s all get out of the fountain and put that behind us,” Zuko suggested, his patience growing thin as Kyoko started to yank his long hair. She and her twin sister were likely attempting to braid it as their mother did, but they did not quite have the hand-eye coordination for that yet. 

It was then that the cloudy skies decided to pour down onto the earth, drenching everything in sight. Kya yelped, jumping towards her sister to shield her from the rain. Reika rolled her eyes but extended her small barrier of water over her sister.

Katara immediately bent the water above her head so that the sleeping child she was holding would remain dry. Within seconds, Zuko was the odd man out with no way to stave off the rain. But with the waterbenders in the family, he had no worries.

Before Zuko could make any move to join Katara huddled underneath the dome, he realized that he, too, was dry. Directing his gaze upward, he saw a grinning Minami and Kyoto holding up the rain with shrugged shoulders, although man droplets slipped through their amateur forms.

Reika and Kya gasped before dissolving into fits of laughter. Katara grinned widely, declaring, “Now it looks like we’ve got you outnumbered in more ways than one, Zuko.”

Zuko didn’t mind in the slightest.

6.

There was a rather large gap between Yuri and Sora because Katara and Zuko hadn’t exactly planned for a sixth child.   
They’d been overjoyed, if not a little dumbfounded, to find out they would be parents yet again. Zuko had even felt a small remnant of hope that this would finally be a son.

He loved his daughters, but it would be nice to have at least one of each. Or so he figured. His experience with young boys was solely confined to his childhood idiocy and Aang’s son, Bumi. 

Neither of those was exactly the shining examples that his daughters, who had him wrapped around their little fingers and knew it, provided. So when yet another girl entered the world, Zuko merely chuckled and kissed her cheek.

He obviously wasn’t meant to have sons, but by the spirits was he happy to have his daughters. 

All eight members of the family huddled up in the courtyard of the beach house on Ember Island not long after Sora came along. They laid upon a collection of quilts and pillows dragged outside from the house by an army of girls, pleading, “Daddy, it’ll be so fun! You have to let us!”

Zuko folded like his uncle after betting on a bad game of Pai Sho. Katara giggled softly, as her daughters had learned how to bend their father to their own will from the very best: her. 

He shot her a pointed look that was effortlessly repelled by Sora’s squirming form on her lap. Six babies in and Zuko didn’t think he could ever get tired of the infant stage. Sure, the long nights and crying and dirty diapers were exhausting. But his girls could wrap a little chubby fist around one of his fingers and all of that would be forgotten.

Katara handed Sora over and Zuko hugged her close with one hand as he attempted to light a fire with the other.

Yuri jumped up, waving her arms and yelling, “No! Daddy, I wan’ do it!”

She pouted softly, two dimples forming in her rounded cheeks. The word "no" wasn’t even in Zuko’s vocabulary anymore.

“Alright, Yuri. But be careful with lighting the fire, okay? Don’t lose control of your bending, turtleduck.”

Yuri was the only firebender out of six children so far. And even though Sora was still too young to show any signs of bending, Zuko had a feeling it would stay this way. 

Not that he minded. He was easily outnumbered in a house full of waterbenders and girls, but he liked it that way. Zuko loved all of his daughters and as they piled on top of him to use him as a human furnace, he knew they loved him, too.

As he stared into the fire lit by Yuri and the flickering shadows it cast over Katara’s face, he couldn’t help but smile. He had her to thank for all of this. Katara had given him everything that he had. And he would be grateful for her and the living proof of the love they shared for eternity.


End file.
